16 THE LAMBERTS- Crazy time (1970)

In the year 1966, in the Lower Austrian Weinviertel region, a handful of teenagers formed The Lamberts, and quickly managed to establish themselves as the Hollabrunn district‘s most prolific dance combo. “In the beginning, we still had the typical guitar sound; in 1968, we added an organ”, remembers drummer Gerhard Schieder. “Our lead singer Hannes Beier was a fanatic Elvis-fan, and very good at imitating the vocal style, too.”

Hear for yourself on this A side to their first single: “Crazy time”, a scruffy organ shuffle, was recorded live in front of an attentive audience in a parish hall in Mistelbach, and would no doubt have had the potential to set the country‘s dancefloors on fire. With their jarring Garage sound, fuzz guitar lines, drawn-out drum solos, anarchist humor and off-the-wall Rockabilly vocals, the Lamberts present themselves as a noncommercial, hard rocking underground band. In their later career, the group became a local legend, who would, in the time-honored tradition of Austro-English, spell out their name as “Love And Music By Evening Rocking Top-Show.” Hundreds of shows, a couple of line-up changes and a handful of other 7" releases followed, before the group disbanded in the mid-1980s.